Pax Galactica - A Space Opera

Chapter 19 - Xalax

Decker followed Aranarth into the landing bay of the Sic Semper Tyrannis. He tried to see if he could find the spot where he cratered the ground with AG back during training. He couldn't though. It had been repaired too well.

Both wore the simple, rugged outfits favored by most rangers, their suits retracted and waiting on the small of their backs.

Aranarth led him to one of several identical Partisan-class escorts. The shiny rocket-shaped ship stood on landing gear, its twin torch drives held out on either side by nacelles.

"Welcome to the A.R.C.S. Overdog," said Aranarth.

Aranarth triggered something with a thought, and the ramp leading up into the ship extended to the floor.

"So I guess they don't let you name your own ship then, huh?" asked Decker.

"Shut up, squire," sneered Aranarth.

He made his way into the ship. Decker wasn't far behind him.

"Greetings stranger!" announced the ship as soon as Decker was inside, "I am the A.R.C.S. Overdog, fully sapient starship and hopefully your new good friend."

"Nice to meet you, Overdog," said Decker. "My name's Sam Decker."

"Squire Decker," corrected Aranarth, yelling from the cockpit. "Get used to saying it."

Aranarth relaxed himself into the extremely comfortable looking pilot's chair. He snapped his fingers and pointed to the co-pilot's chair. Decker walked over and sat down. The large window screen in front of them crackled for a moment as it came online before eventually resolving into a crystal-clean picture of the landing bay directly in front of the ship.

The silver escort rose slowly up into the air on a cushion of antigravity before easing its way out of the landing bay through the selective force field. As soon as it was well away from the Tyrannis it engaged torch drives and rocketed off leaving behind a tail of red comet fire.

"Overdog, plot a hyperspatial course for the planet Xalax. Maker's Eye System, Orion Arm," said Aranarth.

"My pleasure!" replied Overdog.

Aranarth checked a few things on his console to make sure everything was in order before engaging the hyperdrive. The Overdog began to take carefully plotted shortcuts through the higher dimensions, affecting an effective speed several orders of magnitude faster than it's actual speed. The ship's AI took things from there. 

Aranarth spun his chair around to face Decker.

"I suppose I should bring you up to speed," said Aranarth.

"I could just download the details," offered Decker.

"No," said Aranarth. "You don't know something unless you know it."

Decker wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean.

"Alright?" he said. It was almost a question.

"For the past several decades the gug-gug-gugs, the only intelligent species native to the planet Dididi-Dididi-Dididi, have been positioning military assets in the vicinity of three independent aliens worlds located within Human Space. The gug-gug-gugs are not FTL Players on any level so this involved a lot of lighthugging, wormholes, and ferrying. Wasn't hard to spot.

"Once we caught on to what was happening we sent two rangers to talk to the gug-gug-gug government and warn them of the potential consequences of their actions. And I do mean 'we'; the rangers were dragons. Both rangers went missing, are presumed dead, but before they did one of them managed to send us a fatline claiming that the gug-gug-gugs were being provided equivtech weapons by the Old Ones.